All photos provided by Alex Hall

The first Magma was great, the second added a little polish, tightened things up and basically improved every aspect. Not to mention the shorts and Hunter’s two-year portrait: Soulstar. I was understandably hyped to hear what the boys had cooked up this time.

Expect creativity in both the skiing, from A Hall and Hunter, and the filming/production from Owen. They’ve all come a long way in their prospective areas of expertise since Magma I.

After a busy winter, fitting filming the movie around other commitments, we all got together to talk about “completing the trilogy”, how Magma got started and what’s next for the trio and Magma itself.

We had this chat at the end of August before anyone had seen the edit but, personally, expectations were sky high.

After the break, why did you guys come back to make the third?

Owen: It’s kind of a trilogy thing. We never stopped filming together anyway, so we just thought we might as well make a third. They’re pretty fun to make anyway!

A Hall: Not always!

Haha no, last summer we were all in Hood, Hunter was finishing up for Soul Star and I was filming for Faction. We had a couple of bad weather days and we went out to the coast by Oregon, to go surfing, then we just had a chat. We pretty much just discussed whether we should make another one or not and we decided to do it. That was back in May last year, so we’ve known for a while that we were going to do it.

Hunter: I don’t really know why. I guess it’s what everyone’s said: The trilogy, making three and it felt like we maybe had some unfinished business. The first two, we only filmed for a little bit, like they were small windows. At least myself, I wanted to put a lot more of my season into this one, rather than a couple of weeks at the end of the season.

So, this one was done over the whole winter?

A Hall: Yeah, well definitely on and off. With Hunter doing all the pipe events, I did all the big air and slope ones and Owen was busy filming other things. We were kind of picking and choosing windows, starting pretty much in November and finished in June.

How did that work? With you two being so busy with the contest scene and shooting a full movie? Is it only really doable the way you did it?

Hunter: Yeah, we just tried to take full advantage of any opportunity. Over Christmas, we did all of the urban stuff, over a three-week trip. Directly after the Copper contest, we drove out East and that trip went all the way through Christmas and New Years. It ended because I had to go back to Copper for another halfpipe camp, so it was just from one thing, straight into the next.

You released a few shorts, like jumping over Bucky Lasek, are they separate from the Magma movies?

A Hall: We knew we’d be filming as much as we could throughout the season and we’d have a good amount of B-Roll and stuff, so just thought we can just release it throughout the winter, rather than just one thing in the fall, because we had all this extra footy that we’re not using, plus some park days and stuff. But yeah, they are completely separate.

Where was the movie shot?

Owen: All over! On a street trip; we went to South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa and some stuff in Utah. We went out to California for the slush jumps, then went back to hood. We were kind of bouncing around all over the place. All USA though.

Just going right back to the beginning: Was Magma always just a complete collaboration, or did one of you have the initial idea?

Owen: It was kind of Hunter’s brainchild. He was the mastermind behind it all and he brought us all together.

Hunter: Magma was all three of us. My idea for Magma is that we’ll grow it into something more hopefully, not so much just the yearly movies, maybe something else. It’s never going to just be me, just be Alex or just be Owen. It will always include all of us.

For Alex and I, if Owen is doing other things, we could film other things as well. The group, as a whole, is Owen, A Hall and I.

A Hall: It kind of comes in waves though. The first movie it was all Hunter and Owen I just kind of showed up and skied. The second and third movies were maybe more of a group effort. We all play our parts, we all plan certain spots or certain trips and pitch ideas. It’s always a group discussion, like where we want to go, what we want to film. Filming stuff is definitely more up to Owen, but we still try to give some kind of input. Whether that’s helping with music or giving our input on visions or something like that, but we let Owen create the masterpiece.

When’s the movie out?

Hunter: We’re not sure yet, November, December, something around then. We’ll do a couple of premieres in October hopefully. [haha it just dropped, go watch it!]

Without giving too much away, which segment/spot should we look out for?

Hunter: Not having seen it all, but just being a part of it all, I think the ending was definitely the biggest piece for us. It tied it all together and it was many months of filming, pushing and just really trying to grind. Then we maybe weren’t thinking that the ending would work out the way that it did. At least for me, it was quite the experience. It was the last day that we’d have the opportunity to film, the snow levels weren’t helping. There were just a bunch of pieces that needed to work perfectly for everything to work out and it kind of did. That was fortunate and made for some real emotion. Nothing was fronted, fake or staged. No “Go Pro high five sh*t”, it was all pretty legit.

Where was that?

A Hall: We built a jump in Hood, that took us a couple days to build. We were actually in California before, snow was pretty good but we weren’t finding as many spots as we’d hoped for. Owen and I had to leave by June 16th, so we only had three or four days left. We drove all the way up to Hood, banking on the fact that we could just build a big ass jump.

I ended up going solo and scoping all the zones. There was way less snow than we thought there would be. California had so much snow and we heard that Hood had a good year, but spring ended up being warm, so the snow had melted. I only really found one jump spot, way up high, that we’d actually talked about doing in Magma 1, but there wasn’t enough snow. We shot Magma 1 in July, but we were up there in June this year.

We just shovelled this jump for two days straight and hit it on the third day. It all just worked out; perfect weather, perfect sunset, the jump was really sick and the next morning Owen and I had to drive 12 hours all the way to Salt Lake. It was literally the last day that we could film it. Like Hunter said, I think it tied everything together. It felt like we were missing the final piece, but getting that final session was a good ending. Without that final session, I think that the movie would have felt a bit empty, in a way.

Owen: It was fortunate that it worked out, I was stressing about it!

Hunter: Owen was stressing hard, but the stars aligned and it all worked out.

If Magma III completes the trilogy, does that mean this is it for full-length movies?

Owen: I think we’ll just retire the title “Magma” for the movies, leave it as a trilogy. We’ll explore other avenues, still make videos and produce longer & shorter videos, everything. I think we’ll just change it up a little bit.

Hunter: For us, if we’re filming sh*t together, it’ll all be under the name of Magma, but the name of the movie itself, this is kind of it.

I’m sure we could film the same stuff and call it Granite or something.

Owen: Hot lava!

Soul Star was under Magma?

Hunter: Yeah, so things like that and if I filmed something with Owen again, it’d just be under Magma.

Cool, while we’re here do you guys have much planned for the winter? I guess you two (A Hall + Hunter) will be following the contests?

A Hall: Yeah, Hunter and I will probably do most of the events, kind of all of them for myself, but most of them. Then trying to film stuff in between, whether it’s weekly or with or without Owen, depending on if he’s busy. Also trying to get real footage on top and see where it takes us, in terms of what we want to do with it. Pretty much just film, for me at least, as much as I can between events. I just don’t want to put so much pressure on myself as I did for this one. More just kind of roll with it and get footage when I can. Not specifically for any particular longer project, just more figure it out later kind of vibe.

Hunter: Yeah, we haven’t made any super legit/solid plans yet, right now we’re just planning some premieres we can do for Magma III and get all that together. Plans are still up in the air, Alex and I will start travelling pretty soon, just for contests and stuff. We’ll figure all that out and probably later in the year we’ll have a legitimate, locked in plan.

Owen: I don’t know if I’ll be with these guys as much this year, they’re going to be travelling around the comps, I’m going to try to make it to a bunch and do as much filming with them as possible. I do have some other things on my plate that I’m trying to pursue. Stoked to keep filming and I think we’re just going to try to keep pushing the YouTube channel and growing that as much as possible.